I think that's too much work for little gain. I'll just be straightforward and add the final information to the current unit types. Nuvdael is the only one that suffers from that approach, anyway. Also makes it easier to maintain

From the complete changelog that you posted, it seems like this is quite a significant update! I´ll do my usual play-trough in the future and then put my feedback here.
I´m glad my suggestions were useful in the end .

EDIT: I think the "root of evil" scenario has a turn limit that is too low currently. This attempt was my most sucesseful one and i was still too much behind the gorgon. Since she has an head start in relation to the player´s units, has a better movement type and sends other units to slow her pursuers, i´m not seeing how it´s possible to eventually catch her.

Disclaimer: I hope it´s ok to double post in this case, since it´s to give a general review of the new version of the campaign.

The most noticeable changes, namely the reworked/added scenarios and the inclusion of new antagonists, make the middle of the campaign more exciting and make some plot points feel more natural (namely the nature of the petrified statues and the incursion onto the undergrounds of Th'awrya).

I´ll move on into the notes that i took during my play-trough:

General notes:

Spoiler:

->If an enemy unit gets into a village because of a knockback attack, The enemy side does not get ownership of that village;
->After getting the corresponding advancement of the bear, the movement frame of uthain sometimes switches to his normal sprite;
->Would it be useful to include a sentence saying which units can use an object, when someone tries to pick it up with an unit that cannot use it? For me it feels natural who can use it or not anyways;
->Maybe making a quick note for what the exclamation mark means, for the first time that they appear? This one i feel might be too much hand holding xD;
->Au´la doesn´t get the stardust special on any of her 2 attacks when that AMLA is chosen, so right now it´s the equivalent of wasting an AMLA when that option gets chosen;
->Don´t know if it happens with more units, but i noticed that keshian immortal is able to retalliate against units with the trample weapon special (this ocurred when i was testing which unique recruit i wanted, when 1 of these attacked a sandmare);
->Both of the 3 new units have, in their discription, the note for the ravage weapon special saying how it works, altough only the keshian immortal has that weapon special;
->Alternative azyan (mounted version) can move after attacking, but this ability isn´t stated in his description;
->1 of the 3 advancements of azyan has disappeared, there´s 2 options of the normal AMLA (currently there´s 2 unique advancements and 2 heroic advancements to choose from);
->The exp and life bar of the magical book seems to be too far lower than other units;
->Are magical scimitars supposed to be poisonable?;
->Ibn ghani cannot equip swords;
->Units can be knokbacked into lower levels, is this intended?;
->Don´t know if every unit with trample has this issue, but when whadet (the djin variant) attacks, he stops hitting after his first sucesseful hit. He also can´t kill units in some occasions, instead they get negative hitpoints in those cases;
->After advancing into ascended athvari, dawoud loses the gorgon head attack;
->Ascended dawoud has the exp and life bar a little higher than the other units;

Peril

Spoiler:

->If the player chooses to defeat both enemy leaders, there´s the chance that he only has to move dawoud until finishing the scenario. Maybe defeating both of them could be an alternative objective?;
->When ilriel his explaining whu nuvdael is the king of the southwoods, her dialogue stops abruptly after the sentence "It was in that time when our sages recognized that wisdom and words alone can´t...", although there´s more dialogue in the file corresponding to the scenario;

A Whisper in the Sands:

Spoiler:

->Sometimes the allied AI attacked enemies that were in their range and other times they stayed put, even though they were in range to attack them;
->Having a note, in the style of the "The Pearl of the Desert" scenario, saying when the allied units will move could be useful for players to understand how to manipulate their use;

The Pearl of the Desert:

Spoiler:

->Dawoud asks to "bring the tahib", but it´s an hakim that comes to ilriel rescue;

Shadows of Isanbar:

Spoiler:

-> Nuvdael encounters these new undead now but only talks about them some scenarios later. There´s some information that can´t be said right here and that´s incorporated into the "Cloud River" scenario, but recognizing them here seems more natural than only doing it later;
->I think i was being dumb, but only on my 2 try did i get where was the exact place to recruit, after i gave up in trying to finish the scenario with only the starting units xD;
->There happens to appear daylight time sometimes in this scenario, is this intended?;
->The objectives say that the exit is in the northwest, but it´s in the northeast;
->Although he´s only a minor loyal unit, it feels strange to encounter a red mage imprisioned in the prison and not having anyone comment on how/why he got captured;

Gaze of the Three:

Spoiler:

->The story image before this scenario has no text on it, is this intendedl? Seems strange since it´s the only one where this happens in all of the campaign;
->Since uthain no longers asks nuvdael for his story in the scenario before this one, his dialogue before nuvdael tells it doesn´t make much sense now. It indicates that he has already asked for it, when this is the first time it´s done in the current version;
->After the gorgon goes to under 0 hp, she runs to the corner of the map with -x hp and becomes invisible. She has to be attacked again to truly run away, this beahaviour doesn´t seem to be intended;

Root of Evil:

Spoiler:

->Only Au´la is able to unpetrify one of the 3 new units, don´t know if her stating their current condition will be enough for everyone to get that she´s the oen with the ability to save them;
->The exclamation mark doesn´t disappear from the 2 units that remain petrified;
->The new type of recruits are probably too much cheap right now. For their current price, they are better units to recruit than every other of the units that can be recruited in the city of th'arwya. In the last scenario, i was able to have 9 of these units and lost 2 extra until that scenario, which decreased the difficulty of some of the following scenarios quite significantly;
->Although it´s stated in the scenario objectives that ilaroth will get a bonus if he kills the gorgon, this isn´t mentioned or alluded to in the dialogue of the scenario;

Cloud River:

Spoiler:

->Since the heroes arrive into this scenario by walking into an open field (instead of exiting from an underground passage, like in previous versions), the structure of the starting point doesn´t quite feel right;
->Nuvdael talks like this is the first time that they see these new undead on the desert fields, when they have already seen them in "Shadows of Isanbar";

Eye of the Hurricane:

Spoiler:

->After an enemy attacks a unit and the unit runs away from it, the enemy unit regains the "question mark" and doesn´t attack if someone comes under their vision range;

Tharwya:

Spoiler:

->The cage from where balriel is imprisioned disappears before the dialogue indicates that she is free;
->Is it intentional that the alternative acvancement of azyan (mounted version) loses it´s marksman on the ranged attack and gains it on the melle attack?;
->After talking with ma'ralek, the objectives remain unchanged;

Blackhands:

Spoiler:

->The dialogue with shab doesnt trigger if he´s the one that begins the attack on the player;
->Maybe having the ashuar forces wait 1 turn before attacking could be a good change? They can get some unexpected kills right now;

Return to Tharwya:

Spoiler:

->The sentence on the opening screen is out of place right now, because it states that the trophy will be given to ibn ghani, when in fact he was rescued moments ago from the bandits grasp and wasn´t the one that sent the heroes to the underground;
->The return of Ibn ghani could porbably warrant passage from the guard when he´s the one that comes close to him and also be able to trigger the dialogue with ma'ralek, since eveyone assumes that he dissapeared and he´s the khalid;

The Great Wall:

Spoiler:

->When azyan gives his dialogue about equaba, the screen zooms into the left side of the wall, instead of showing equaba on the screen;

Uzar the Betrayer:

Spoiler:

->there´s no information about the amount of carryover gold into the next scenario (it´s not importante anymore but the player doesn´t know that, if this is the first tiem he´s playing the campaign);
->Unlike previous versions, uzar joins the enemy attack and stays near his allied leader, while also attacking anyone in his vision range. This exposes him and makes an easy task to end the scenario quicker than it´s probably expected (finished the scenario on turn 9 by baiting him with an expendable unit);

Above the stars and below earth:

Spoiler:

->Of all the 10 heroes, only 9 of them have evil doppelgangers, nuvdael does not have one. This seems like an oversight;

Battle of the Eons

Spoiler:

->The objectives state that only Ilriel can kill the three kings, but I killed the 3 of them with other units and was able to not only not lose, but i also won the scenario and finished the campaign while doing that. After each one of them died, the following messeage appeared "<Invalid WML found> [else] not supported";

Like always, you continue to deliver an awesome campaign

EDIT: Forgot to mention, did you give up on the idea of the sequel? I´m asking because the updated version doesn´t contain that part anymore.

Thanks again for the playthrough and notes and sorry for the late answer.

The Root of Evil scenario certainly suffers from the random placement of the petrified units. I had luck during my playthrough and could lock the gorgon with Au'la. The random placement isn*t the best idea, but Wesnoth 1.13 likes to crash when switching between the game and windows, which makes it a pain in the butt to do the placement by hand. I've increased the turn number for now. Also thanks for pointing out more bugs!

The sequel has no high priority right now as I'd first like to polish OoA and squash the last bugs. I am afraid I always introduce new bugs with every update, though . . .

I would say that the increase in the number of turns is enough to make sure that running out of time isn´t an issue. In my case i took around 40 turns btw.
That´s the bane of development, there´s always something more to fix

I downloaded your campaign for the first time yesterday when you updated (4/4/2017).
After the 1º map (the dialog only), i've started the 2º map with an error (pic attached) but i finished normally.
The objective of the 3º map is to move Dawoud to the other side, but he wasn't loaded on the map. I've just realised this after reaching the objective with Iiriel and nothing happened, then I realised I must reach the point with Dawoud but he wasn't in the map.
Some files attached to you see.

Yeah, I am pretty sure it has to do with the animation / healing animation code, which got changed for 1.13.7, but apparently led to several bugs. My other campaigns also suffer from this. This is not something I can fix, since it is an internal error of 1.13.7 Wesnoth. You'll have to use 1.13.6 in case you want to play OoA, it's tested and played through on 1.13.6, just as ahmannar already mentioned.

Kwandulin wrote:Yeah, I am pretty sure it has to do with the animation / healing animation code, which got changed for 1.13.7, but apparently led to several bugs. My other campaigns also suffer from this. This is not something I can fix, since it is an internal error of 1.13.7 Wesnoth. You'll have to use 1.13.6 in case you want to play OoA, it's tested and played through on 1.13.6, just as ahmannar already mentioned.

Yeah, I think it is due to the bug I reported here. A quick fix is to just remove the translation mark. This breaks the translation, but not the game. I have recently finished OoA on 1.13.7 and something similar happens also in the 'Tharwya' scenario, where I had to remove a few lines of code around the liberation of the elvish bloodmaiden. The other scenarios worked fine.

Spoiler:

By the way, the inclusion of flying units make some scenarios much easier than in a previous version. I am thinking about 'Cloud River' and 'The Great Wall'. I was able to finish them much more quickly than I was probably supposed to do.

Updated OoA to v.1.15. Made some strike gfx for many custom units/heroes, making it visually pleasant when your wyverns rip apart your foes, cleaned up many smaller bugs and irregularities and made a hero overhaul. Also a ton of more changes, mostly basing on ahmannar's feedback:

Full changelog:

Spoiler:

if a unit is knockbacked onto a village, it gets the ownership of the village.

finally found out why items are not showing, which unit can pick it up. The old behaviour only showed who can pick the item up, if the unit already matched the filter. Now, any player-owned unit that steps on an item, triggers the filter showing up. So you know, which unit can pick it up.

small note to what the exclamation mark means in "Whisper in the Sands"

fixed Au'la not getting her stardust ability

fixed Keshian Immortal being able to retaliate against Serrulian Sandmares

fixed the unit descriptions of the Keshian Immortal, the Serrulian Sandmare and the Th'arwyan Yer-Cron'ae

Azyan's spurt ability now works and Azyan got a corresponding unit description

fixed Azyan's AMLA disappearing when riding the Tangshe

books and scimitars are no longer poisonable

Ibn Ghani can now equip swords

units can no longer be knocked back into tower wall terrain

trample now kills enemy units (XP isn't granted, though)

after advancing to the Ascended Ustura, Ilaroth no longer loses the gorgon head attack (in case he got it)

no bug: Ascended Ustura has its xp and hp bar very far to the left and top. This is due to the sprite size of the Ascended Ustura (can't fix)

hero overhaul: new, matching icons for the abilities, new abilities for some heroes, new animations for some heroes, Ilriel and Ilaroth no longer have their 3x3+1 ability tree. Any hero can now unlock all AMLAs and no longer has to choose. XP needed is greatly increased, though: 60xp for the first, 100xp for the second, 140xp for the third AMLA.

in the Mountains of Peril, the player can win by defeating Rumms, Narfi and all their units

in the Mountains of Peril, Ilriel's dialogue no longer crashes

in Whisper in the Sands, there's now a small note stating that the guards are staying in their fortification

in the Pearl of the Desert, a hakim is called and a hakim appears

in the Shadows of Isanbar, Nuvdael talks about the new undead

in the Shadows of Isanbar, the fields where you can recruit from are now normal castle tiles

in the Shadows of Isanbar, there rules darkness now

in the Shadows of Isanbar, the objectives now state that the exit is in the north

in the Shadows of Isanbar, Karlensog, our schizophrenic mage, got a small dialogue

in Gaze of the Three, added a story text

in the Shadows of Isanbar, Uthain asks Nuvdael about him being a High King. Nuvdael answers in Gaze of the Three.

in Gaze of the Three, fixed strange behaviour of Yrialdhe, when she is killed

removed portrait of Yrialdhe

in Root of Evil, Au'la talks about being able to unpetrify the warriors of the past

in Root of Evil, when Au'la unpetrifies a unit type, the exclamation marks above the other units are removed

increased cost of the three special units

in Root of Evil, it is now stated in the dialogue and objectives, that Ilaroth is granted a great bonus, when he kills Yrialdhe

in Cloud River, removed the ruins

in Cloud River, Nuvdael no longer talks about the undead (he does that underneath Isanbar now)

in Eye of the Hurricane, units no longer regain their questionmark halo

in Eye of the Hurricane, alarmed units receive a bouncing red exclamation mark

Ashuar, Ma'ralek and Au'la's unit types are no longer called Ashuar, Ma'ralek or Au'la

added gaze effect to Yrialdhe

added rip effect to wyverns

improved wyvern sprites

blade dance effect on Nuvdael

strike gfx for Ilaroth

Yrialdhe, Abbas and Ma'ralek now have the same "artifact" effect

bigger sprite for Uthman

the Hurasch's sprite is now bigger

you can no longer buy Caliks from Karah

no more fog in Shadows of Isanbar

trample effect for Ibn Khazul and Ibn Ghani

improved pre-movement and post-movement animation of the Kar'rhur-Hai

the L2 Masun no longer advances to the L4 Saray

Azyan now shoots arrows into the air

Uthain's thundershield is now centered, bigger and blue and sparks, when he is attacked (doesn't work in 100% of cases(?))

the player loses, when Ibn Ghani is killed

Eskiya and Calik are a bit weaker now

the Epilogue now states what is happening to every single hero (poor Uthain, the troll's cooking pot finally got you)

Known Bugs:
1.13.6
- Kesh's forces attack their own minotaurs in scenario 13. This behaviour is fixed in 1.13.7+dev
- Performance regression during AI turns, especially in lategame. This is fixed in 1.13.7+dev. In 1.13.6 you can just turn off "Allow damage calculation with Monte Carlo simulation" option in Advanced Options to avoid this.

1.13.7
- animations are bugged, making the campaign unplayable. This behaviour is fixed in 1.13.7+dev

Your best bet is to wait some time until 1.13.8 is released or just play on 1.13.6.

Last edited by Kwandulin on April 19th, 2017, 4:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I was replaying the campaign again and, even with the monte carlo option turned off, every turn was consistently needing around 30 seconds to end since the first visit to Th'arwya. It doesn't crash but continuing until the end on my pc would take a long time, so i'll give the feedback that i got until this point:

General Feedback:

Spoiler:

->The notes regarding the hero units, given in "Drought" and "Peril", have information that overlap each other at the moment. In "Drought" it´s said that hero units have special advancaments, but it´s not said that they have an improved AMLA. This information of the AMLA is only given is "Peril" and it´s said in this scenario that hero units can only pick up 1 out of 3 possible advancements (no longer the case);

->Sometimes, when attacking with the knockback attack of Dawoud on open terrain on offense and no other units around the enemy, they didn´t get knocked back;

->The description for the knockback attack doesn´t match it exactly. It says that after sucessefully getting hit by a knocback attack, the unit is pushed back one hex, when this only happens after the fight has ended;

->Ibn kazhul and Au'la have a starting exp requirement of -12 in comparison to the other heroes at all the time;

->The link of the abilities from the heroes doesn´t led to the units that use them, in the "BfW help" menu;

->Is Au'la supposed to be poisonable (asking this from a lore view point)?

-> I think the nuvdael rider AMLA is not working as intended. After taking it and not having bloodlust yet, he's able to attack 2 times per turn and move after those attacks. That AMLA should only let him attack 1 tiem and mvoe after that right? After having both the bloodlust and rider AMLA, he can attack a total of 3 times per turn.

->The idol sphere AMLA of Au'la is completely overpowered. She´s gaining +4 ranged damage and +2 melee damage with each kill she gets, making it extremely worth it to feed exp to her. I´m attaching an image of her state in the last scenario to show how broken she got. She probably killed more enemies by herself than the rest of my army combined in the last scenarios that i played (she also has the elf stone which is basically useless on her given her huge HP, so she could potentially be even stronger). She had 195 hp, a 120-2 melle attack, a 117-4 ranged attack and a 142-1 ranged attack;

->Is it intended for the Th'arwyan Yer-cron'a to have a higher value of necessary exp when compared to the other 2 special units?

->Uthain still changes sometimes to his other sprite (when defending) if he's in "bear form".

Suggestions of descriptions:

Spoiler:

Thrall-> The life-like appearance of the thrall can confuse people when seen from afar or in the darkness. Nerverthless, the sighting of its swollen and blackened body reveals his true nature as a creation of an evil mind.

Iron Thrall-> Although their ever increasing size and suffocating stench of decay hinders their ability to pass as a human in any kind of situation, the iron thrall exibhits enough strengh to be armed with a strong weapon capable of crushing even the most valiant of knights.

Black Thrall-> An abomination only conceivably worked on by experienced necromancers, the black thrall towers over its master's enemies with a combination of hunger and rage atypical of their creations. Its unusual behaviour and ghoul-like attitude makes even most of their masters fearful of even calling upon their help.

Athvari Counselor-> The mistery surroundering the athvari and their practices has consistently attracted attention to their actions. Being interested in preventing the dispersion of the ways of magic and in ensuring the safety of the desert people, a few of these have taken on their own hands the task to guide and help the Khalids in their task of protecting their realms.

Au'la death -> Iskandar: It walready was a risk having freed her from her own prison, who knows what will happen now?

Peril:

Spoiler:

->After Narfi appears and the objectives are updated, it´s no longer stated that killing the enemies will result in victory.
->In the newest version, the trolls go out of their caves to attack the player in the sands. This makes it so that, when the elves arrive near the player, all enemy trolls are basicly dead, reducing greatly the difficulty of this scenario.

A Whisper in the Sands:

Spoiler:

->Although the objectives state that the allied guards can leave their fortification if oredered, i din´t see a way to do this;

->The message about scarabs upon sighting them appears after one of them appears out of the fog, not when they are triggered by the player, so some of them have been killed when this message appears. Is this intended?

Gazes of the three:

Spoiler:

->The last sentence from ilaroth about having dispelled the magic in "the gaze of the three" doesn't feel completely right in the current state of the campaign. It´s true that there isn't anymore of t in that place, but there´s no mention of the gorgon having run or about the need to chase and finish her.Having that place cleansed of magic is more due to having removed the gorgon when compared to older versiosn of the campaign, where the enemies were "dead" after the end of the scenario.

Root of evil:

Spoiler:

->It may be possible to get to the chest at 14,4 , but having it almost "mid-air" seems a bit strange. At least, it seems like its floating.

->The dialogue that Au'la has at the end of the second turn might not be relevant anymore, since it's possible to activate the special recruits at the beggining of the second turn.

->It's possible that the gorgon reaches the end of the map and stays there until she's killed or the turn limit ends. Since she's suppused to be running away it feels strange story wise if this happens. Maybe having Au'la or someone else with magical capabilities saying that they can stop her momentarily while asking the rest of the group to catch her quickly (in case she reaches the end of the map), since they can´t hold her too long? I know i'm just nitpicking at this point btw.

Th'arwya:

Spoiler:

->The changes in income upon recruiting units/capturing villages remains like in the previous versions;
->The dialogue of Sharaf doesn't have mention of altawir being able to ride some kind of beast;
->Upon trying to buy the flying snakes, the 125 gold is taken from the player but the unit remains the same as before, there's no change in the unit itself;
->Azyan can't equip any kind of bow or the fire arrows